Optimal data fusion in multiple sensor detection systems

There is an increasing interest in employing multiple sensors for surveillance and communications. Some of the motivating factors are reliability, survivability, increase in the number of targets under consideration, and increase in required coverage. Tenney and Sandell (1982) have recently treated the Bayesian detection problem with distributed sensors. They did not consider the design of data fusion algorithms. An optimum data fusion structure is presented, given the detectors. Individual decisions are weighted according to the reliability of the detector and then a threshold comparison is performed to obtain the global decision.